Noise performance comparison of 1.5 microm correlated photon pair generation in different fibers

In this paper, the noise performances of 1.5 microm correlated photon pair generation based on spontaneous four wave-mixing in three types of fibers, i.e., dispersion shifted fiber, traditional highly nonlinear fiber and highly nonlinear microstructure fiber are investigated experimentally. Result of the comparison shows that highly nonlinear microstructure fiber has the lowest Raman noise photon generation rate among the three types of fibers while correlated photon pair generation rate is the same. Theoretical analysis indicates that the noise performance is determined by the nonlinear index and Raman response of the material in fiber core. The Raman response rises with increasing doping level, while, for the nonlinear index, the impact of doping level is weak. As a result, highly nonlinear microstructure fiber with pure silica core has the best noise performance and great potential in practical sources of correlated photon pairs and heralded single photons.